While nothing advances on the side of alternatives to confinement, the Belloubet reform
strengthens the powers of the executive to the detriment of the judiciary, and accentuates
the drift towards dehumanization and a purely administrative treatment, on scale: more
Internet , dematerialization and videoconferences. The professionals of justice protest
---- The beginning of the year 2018 was marked by unprecedented movements of claim in the
judicial world. The prison guards blocked the prisons to demand more security, more
construction, more confinement. They were heard, they won the case ... As soon as this
movement was over, another front opened, bringing together, exceptionally, magistrates,
lawyers, clerks, judicial staff. The professionals of justice rose up (and still rise)
against a plan for the reform of justice, many of whose provisions had not been the
subject of prior consultation. Those who fight for the poorest, who refuse that the rights
of the weakest are still reduced, have not yet won.

To remove the justice of the citizens
This reform project concerns everyday justice: civil procedure, criminal procedure, and
the meaning and effectiveness of sentences. There is also a reflection on the digital
world, yet archaic, jurisdictions ever poorer ... Despite the assertions of the custody of
the Seals, Nicole Belloubet, the professionals.les were little consulted.es, or the va
-vite, within extremely tight deadlines. All of them had the unpleasant surprise of
discovering, at the moment when the project was communicated to them, measures that had
never been discussed beforehand, and did not even appear in the electoral program of a
president who has no vision of what justice must embody.

And for what result, what project ? A desire to further remove justice from those in whose
name it is rendered, from those whom it must protect. Justice is already badly perceived
by those to whom it is addressed: it is long, it is obscure.

A frenzied rationalization of civil procedures ...
What is envisaged by the government is to move it further away from litigants, to
eliminate hearings and even judges. While the behavior of some and some magistrates may be
problematic, the transfer of decision-making to administrations, in personal and human
litigation, is frightening. However, this is what is envisaged concerning the fixing of
contributions to the maintenance and upbringing of children, in family disputes, which
would thus be entrusted to the family allowance funds (CAF). Without hearing, on parts,
and with scales. This question of the scales is all the more important as it concerns the
promoters of an allegedly faster justice, to improve the treatment of " mass litigation".
---- The dematerialization of proceedings, which may have an advantage, can not, however,
be exclusive unless it prevents a large number of litigants from taking legal action.
However, this is what is envisaged: firstly, as an experiment, litigants who wish it will
be able to seize a jurisdiction over the internet and receive news of the procedure
launched. Eventually, this mode of seizure would become exclusive. Just see Moi, Daniel
Blake, Ken Loach, to imagine the confusion of some people left alone in front of a
computer - provided they have one - connected to the internet, without access to a human
or a capable to answer him.

Civil procedure is indeed slow, expensive and not easily accessible to those who sometimes
can not afford the advice of a lawyer because they are too " rich " to benefit from
legal aid, and too poor to pay fees. However, how can one claim to reform it by not
admitting that for these " mass litigation ", it is magistrates and clerks that justice
needs ? With real hearings, where the arguments can be exchanged without the parties have
had to travel several hundred kilometers to access their judges, unless we consider that
videoconferencing could replace the actual discussion ...

... which is also penalized
This thirst for digital technology also carries criminal proceedings, where complaints
will have to be lodged on the internet for victims of crime, where it does not seem to be
the case that anyone can be judged by the perpetrators of the offense. a video screen ...
to streamline costs.

In the same vein, and to satisfy the Ministry of the Interior (sic), facilities are
granted to police officers, " guarantees Procedures are transferred from a judge to a
prosecutor of the republic - the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that he was not
a judicial authority, since he is not independent of the executive power. So police powers
are being strengthened, although they have already been increased since the last
anti-terrorist laws passed, and those of the prosecutors, to the detriment of the rights
of suspected persons. The justice reform project is expected to be debated in Parliament
in September. It would still be likely to move after protests in the streets of Paris and
several provincial cities. Modifications are hoped for ... Professionals have not won yet!

Delphine Boesel (lawyer)

IMMEDIATE APPEARANCE: IT CONTINUES
While the Belloubet reform wants to reduce the access to the judge, no real reflection was
carried out on the immediate appearances, these emergency procedures allowing a
jurisdiction to judge a person quickly, at the exit of the police custody. . This
procedure is the most intrusive to the rights, the most provider of confinement, but is
never questioned. It is the justice of misery, which everyone accommodates because it
meets the requirements of speed.

Even as French prisons crumble under the weight of obsolescence, promiscuity (more than
70,000 people are locked up to date, 30% of whom are awaiting trial), while the most
optimistic speeches on the institutional will to promote alternatives to incarceration
flourish in colloquia and on TV sets, nothing is reflected in the acts. Despite unanimous
findings on the state of French prisons no and no politician has enough courage to
consider another criminal policy, to dare to say that it should less lock up.

Special file: Security without the security
In summary:
Judicial Reform: Towards court robotization ?
Europe: The fortress is also a prison
United States: Chained to Slave History
Big Brother: A real public-private partnership
History: Police sometimes, justice nowhere
Rojava: security and local justice
Chiapas / Zapatistas: Repairing rather than Closing
Practices: Dealing with gender-based violence in a militant environment
Treat the sexual abuser through feminist education
And the " dangerous fools " ? And the " psychopaths " ?